1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a copper fiber body to be incorporated in various resin compositions, rubber compositions, low melting metals, coating compounds or adhesives as an electrically-conducting material, electromagnetic barrier material, reinforcing material or the like.
2. Related Art
As a copper fiber body there has been widely known copper whisker. In 1956, S. S. Blenner obtained copper whisker by reducing a copper halide in hydrogen gas. In 1965, Tachibana and Kishi succeeded in producing a considerably small copper whisker while controlling the rate of reduction reaction of copper halide with carbon dioxide gas produced by the reaction of charcoal with air in a closed air system.
However, these methods are disadvantageous in that the resulting yield is too low. Further, the resulting copper whisker cannot be considered small enough in size. Thus, such a copper whisker can be hardly incorporated in resin compositions, rubber compositions, low melting metals, coating compounds or adhesives as a filler. Further, such a copper whisker can hardly be uniformly dispersed in these materials during addition. Accordingly, the resulting effect, e.g., effect of enhancing mechanical properties such as strength or effect of improving electrical conductivity is not sufficient.
On the other hand, copper fibers available other than these copper whiskers have a diameter of as great as 50 xcexcm and a great length and thus cannot give good results when used as a filler. Further, an electrolytic copper powder is in the form of grain having an aspect ratio of as low as 2 and thus is not an optimum filler material with respect to effect of improving mechanical properties and electrical conductivity.
An object of the present invention is to provide a copper fiber body which can give solution to the foregoing problems with the conventional techniques, that is, can be uniformly dispersed in resin compositions, rubber compositions, low melting metals, coating compounds, adhesives or the like to exert a great effect of electrically or mechanically modifying these materials.
The copper fiber body according to the present invention is a fiber made of copper which is feathery to solve the foregoing problems.
The feathery copper fiber body according to the present invention is a novel fiber body which can be incorporated in high molecular materials as an electrically-conducting material, electromagnetic barrier material or reinforcing material to provide these matrixes with excellent properties.